For posting 1E deck designs for feedback from other players and members of the community.
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By boromirofborg (Trek Barnes)
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#572014
Use this thread to discuss the decklist Decipher Archives: Ladies Night at the Klaestron Outpost - July 1999.
Evolving the "Ladies only" theme, and opening up to more diversity by including [Car].

I find it interesting that out of the first 42 decks listed on the decipher arrives, 3 of them are on the same theme. Clearly, it spoke to the gamers at the time to be able to do something like this, and I think that's part of the ongoing charm of STCCG.

One thing that has made Commander/EDH the most popular format in Magic currently is that people are able to personalizes and theme there decks so much. You can have everything from piles of good stuff.dec, to ones where everyone is wearing a hat in the art, or all the creatures are ladies looking left in the art.

STCCG has always enable people to make decks that follow theme over grand strategy, yet still hang in there as far as being able to just Win Games.
Last edited by boromirofborg on Mon Feb 14, 2022 6:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
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#572136
boromirofborg wrote: Mon Feb 14, 2022 6:49 pm One thing that has made Commander/EDH the most popular format in Magic currently is that people are able to personalizes and theme there decks so much. You can have everything from piles of good stuff.dec, to ones where everyone is wearing a hat in the art, or all the creatures are ladies looking left in the art.
Why can they do that in Commander but not Standard?

I know enough about Magic to be dangerous (mostly to myself), but still have vast context gaps.
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By boromirofborg (Trek Barnes)
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#572169
BCSWowbagger wrote: Thu Feb 17, 2022 12:14 am Why can they do that in Commander but not Standard?

I know enough about Magic to be dangerous (mostly to myself), but still have vast context gaps.
Great question. A lot of the other answers are right but I'll expand on it a bit.


Commander is a primarily multiplayer game. Most other formats are 1v1.
Commander is primarily casual focused - there are no large scale tournaments for it.
Because of the large card pool, and the casualness of it you have decks ranging from "literally bought a reconstructed deck and didn't make a change" to $30,000 tuned deck capable of winning on turn 1, turn 3 if I make it to the 'late' game."

Deck construction are the big differences. Standard formats are 60 cards with a 15 card sideboard. Usually you have 4x of most of the cards. Netdecking is normal, and with he larger formats there are/were weekly large tournaments with a influx of tuned pro decks. Even at casual events like FNM, the pressure to want to win is there, so people tend to make decks that win over decks that do things.

Also, game length. Standard games are best of three matches, with each game taking 15-20 minuets.


Now commander;

You typically start with your commander - a legendary creature. Your deck can only be the colors of that commander. With several thousand different choices for commander, your deck already tends to start to have a theme going with it.

Commander decks are 100 cards, and singleton (except basic lands), and tend to be personalized more then standard decks.

The format is designed to be longer (40 life instead of 20, 3 opponents, so that's 120 life you have to take down one way or another), so you actually play the 6-9 mana cards that are too slow for the rest of the formats.

There's also the social pressure. This is a positive and a negative. Because commander is casual and I'm usually playing it around a table with friends, and it's multiplayer, that means if I kill Bob on turn 3, I've made myself a target for the others, and bob might have to wait 30-40 minutes to get back in.

So casual games tend to hurdle until the climax when lots of people die.
There's also social pressure against NPE type of strategies. (Mass land destruction, etc.)

All of this combines to make the scenario;

When I sit down to play standard, I'm playing a deck that's probably 1 of 5 different viable decks at the moment, with minimal variation from the tunes lists available.

When I sit down to play commander, I could be playing anything, and playing against anything.
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By jadziadax8 (Maggie Geppert)
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#572175
My brother-in-law and his work buddies ONLY play Commander, and now I sort of understand why. Thanks for the explanation, @boromirofborg!
 
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#572183
Agreed, this is an excellent explanation. I've heard of Commander but don't keep my ear close enough to the M:TG ground to know the details.

Is there anything analogous for 1E? I've seen various proposals for multiplayer but have never tried any of them. Would be awesome to have a fun format where a lot of creative/casual decks could thrive. Reminds me of a lot of the threads about how to get artifacts used more, or to get players willing to spend card plays on events, or do anything other than draw as fast as you can -> free-play as much as you can -> solve or battle as fast as possible.
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By MidnightLich (Charlie Plaine)
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#572185
Rachmaninoff wrote: Thu Feb 17, 2022 1:20 pm Agreed, this is an excellent explanation. I've heard of Commander but don't keep my ear close enough to the M:TG ground to know the details.

Is there anything analogous for 1E? I've seen various proposals for multiplayer but have never tried any of them. Would be awesome to have a fun format where a lot of creative/casual decks could thrive. Reminds me of a lot of the threads about how to get artifacts used more, or to get players willing to spend card plays on events, or do anything other than draw as fast as you can -> free-play as much as you can -> solve or battle as fast as possible.
I have something similar I've been kicking around, but haven't gotten it to the point where I like it enough yet to do anything with it.

-crp
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By boromirofborg (Trek Barnes)
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#572195
I keep coming back to thinking about that as well. Commander is easily part of why Magic kept my interest over the years, and always reminded me the most of the Decipher games.


One thing is that the format is both inherently unbalanced and balanced at the same time.

By which I mean if you go just by the official ban list, you can get really powerful. There's a sub-format called Competitive EDH (cEDH) where the point *is* to win, and know that everyone else at the table is fine with that. Turn 3 combo wins are the norm there, with many decks trying to win and being stopped on turn 1-2.


The balance comes in with what the rules committee calls Rule 0 - which boils down to the idea that you should talk with your table. The core of the format started as a way for judges to unwind after large tournaments and spread from there. If you are playing with the same group (I had a play group of the same 6ish people that lasted for about 7 years), and there's no prize on the line, people stray away from NPEs, even if they aren't officially banned.


But to the core, it allows for slower games for a few reasons:

- life total of each player is Double.
- deck is singleton, meaning more variance
- Multiplayer, meaning you have wade thru the life total of usually 3 other players.


If I was trying to translate to STCCG, my gut would be 12 missions, 200 points required.

However the table space for this would be crazy.

Another idea would be that flip the point paradigm. All players start at 100 points, and when you score points you pick another player to lose that much.

This adds more politics back in. Where even if one person gets ahead, they still have to defeat opponents, and not just "combo off".


Lots of food for thought.
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